Comment by exclusiv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by exclusiv | Hacker News Reader

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> When people in my home country think of an “American” they think of people of British descent.

Your home county is just completely wrong in their understanding.

Top 3 Ancestry groups (2015 Census) are actually 1) German, 2) Black/African-American and 3) Mexican. English comes in #5. [1]

If you tally English/Scottish/Welsh, you are only talking about 10% of the US population is British descent. And that was from the Census in 2015. In 2020 they had a White category which was #1, and only 8.2M identified explicitly as English and 1.75M as Welsh.

> if you relocated the population of say Bangladesh to the US, and gave everyone US citizenship, they wouldn’t suddenly become “American.”

They would. You don't have to adhere to some sort of defined American culture or fully assimilate into it, it's not Denmark. If you travel to NYC, Miami, Atlanta, New Orleans, Iowa, LA, San Fran, Dallas, Seattle, you are going to get different people and experiences and cultures. I can assure you they are all very much Americans.

I'd argue that those that worry about a scale of Americanism and where they'd place their own fellow citizens are actually the least American if anything. We can call it the American Culture Paradox. Those that think they are the most American and categorize or judge others are actually the least American!

> The American founders clearly recognized as much when they created a distinction between native-born citizens and naturalized citizens and wrote it into the Constitution.

Yes because they had such massive distrust for the monarchy they didn't want outsiders infiltrating and taking over their new government and country.

[1] https://www.infoplease.com/us/race/ancestry-us-population-ra... (2015 Results)

> Top 3 Ancestry groups (2015 Census) are actually 1) German, 2) Black/African-American and 3) Mexican. English comes in #5. If you tally English/Scottish/Welsh, you are only talking about 10% of the US population is British descent.

And yet, the vast majority of American language, culture, law, civil institutions, etc., come from the British. That’s why there are deep similarities between the Anglo countries on a variety of dimensions.

> They would. You don't have to adhere to some sort of defined American culture or fully assimilate into it, it's not Denmark.

You’re playing a word game where “American” is some shallow legal distinction, but “Danish” implies both a legal definition and a cultural one. Americans have a distinctive history, culture, and worldview which recent immigrants do not share. My parents were fully formed when they came to America at the age of 39. They aren’t American in anything other than a narrow legal sense. They don’t share American values, they aren’t the product of American history, etc. They are Bangladeshis—they think like Bangladeshis, embrace Bangladeshi values, etc.

My kids are markedly different in worldview and values from my parents (in ways that are often quite disconcerting to me, as an immigrant who is only halfway to American). Other Bangladeshis would instantly recognize that “your kids are Americanized.” You can chafe at the label because it offends your sense of multiculturalism, but the phenomenon exists and is instantly recognizable regardless of what label you use.

> And yet, the vast majority of American language, culture, law, civil institutions, etc., come from the British. That’s why there are deep similarities between the Anglo countries on a variety of dimensions.

And yet the English language is a West Germanic language.

Culture is objectively NOT a vast majority British.

Law - so what. Civil institutions - not really. Country was inspired by Parliament and Magna Carta but devised a better foundation.

The US is nothing like Great Britain. There's vastly more impact from Italians, Irish, Germans, French, Spanish, Mexicans and Blacks in our cities than British. Almost nobody celebrates anything British in any city lol. We celebrate our victory over them and that's it. California and Texas alone are bigger than the entire UK. British descendants are just a blip on the 330M+ population.

Yet you find celebrations and cuisine and other cultures and impact from many other ancestries and heritages. US Infrastructure - Irish and Chinese built railroads. Highway system was derived from the Germans. The British are irrelevant and again, your people back home are just wrong in their understanding.

I'm not playing a word game. You have a very antiquated perspective and I don't think you quite understand America. That's not abnormal. Many you might consider way more American than you don't either.

I understand what you are saying though. I truly do. I just think it's a non-productive perspective for this country. What point does it serve to alienate and put people in a box?

I have Muslim employees. They don't partake in things that others do. It's ok. I know Bangladeshi & Indian men share a bunch of values and perspectives with southern US men over northerners in general too. They also share values with regard to hierarchy/age/position with many New Yorkers and Chicagoans.

No American citizen needs to feel so insecure because they might have different values or don't share a certain culture. People that have never left America don't share the same cultures or values either (north vs south, right vs left). We have distinct regional cultures and we have anomalies even within states (Miami, Vegas, Austin, Chicago).

Your original statement "If my ancestors had shaped the America that exists today it would look very different!"

That's the point of America. At some point there were Blacks, Mexicans, Irish and Italians that felt like that.

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. And a general belief in exceptionalism is a tradition.

E pluribus enum - out of many, one. That's what happened. And what will continue to happen. Your British narrative is just false.

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